Alisha’s Attic

TOTP 08 JAN 1999

So, TOTP 1999 repeats are go! It’s my last year of doing this – please be halfway decent! As we’re in early January, the charts are very static with few new releases meaning that this show is full of songs that have been on before. Familiarity is also in evidence with our host who is Jamie Theakston who is becoming as ubiquitous as Simon ‘Smug’ Mayo used to be back in the day.

We start with Bryan Adams and Melanie C with “When You’re Gone”. This single really had legs spending ten consecutive weeks inside the Top 10 including three on the trot at No 6 which is its position this week. It’s continued to enjoy longevity in many forms long after the single finally dropped out of the charts via re-recordings and live performances. Adams returned to the song in 2005 for his compilation album “Anthology”, laying down a new version of it with Pamela Anderson of all people whilst Melanie C rejoined him in 2022 as they revisited the track for Adams’s “Classic Pt. II” album. Bryan frequently performs the song live as an acoustic number, usually plucking a member of the audience out to join him whilst Chisholm has also performed it during her concerts on a regular basis.

Theakston goes in for a bit of sexual innuendo in his intro to the next act. “If you’re one of the millions suffering from the flu then may I suggest the Theakston remedy. Stay in bed, snuggle up under your duvet and enjoy a healthy dose of the Honeyz” he chirps before doing his best Sid James impression by blowing out his cheeks. Yeah, knobhead. The Honeyz are back on the show for similar reasons as Bryan Adams/Melanie C – their hit “End Of The Line” is holding at No 9 having already peaked at No 5 in its first week in the chart. They were a bit like a prototype Sugababes weren’t they? Not that they shared a musical style but in terms of a revolving door policy when it came to their line up. Though there have only ever been four members to feature in a trio format, there is just one ever present in Célena Cherry. Of the other three, Heavenli Roberts has had five separate stints in the band, Naima Belkhiati two and Mariama Goodman three. The current lineup features Cherry, Roberts and Cherry’s sister Candace. Do you think they’ve…ahem…finally found the right combination?

Next, a third hit on the spin that has been on the charts for weeks already. Why is Robbie Williams on the show performing “No Regrets” again? Well, because he’s Robbie Williams would seen to be the main criteria. Observe the sycophantic intro from Jamie Theakston – “It’s Rob’s world, we just live in it”. Notice he calls him Rob not Robbie. I think they were possibly ‘mates’ at this point on account of Williams dating Nicole Appleton and Theakston seeing her sister Natalie though I think the former relationship ended around this time. Executive producer Chris Cowey would argue that it’s because “No Regrets” was going up the charts and with a lack of new releases to showcase, this was perfectly legitimate and justified. The truth is though that after debuting at No 4, the single had not spent another week inside the Top 10. Yes, successive drops to Nos 14 and 19 had been countered by consecutive moves back up the charts to No 18 and this week’s position of No 16 but it was hardly a big seller at this time. This was surely just a case of trying to pad the show out with a big name wasn’t it? Theakston’s intro doubles down on this. Let me entertain you? Nah, I’m good thanks.

A new song! A rare new entry into the Top 40 in the first week of January! It comes courtesy of Alisha’s Attic whose chart career to this point has been a model of consistency. Their first five hits had all peaked at either Nos 12, 13 or 14. “Wish I Were You” would end that run by going no higher than No 29. More than that though, it was portentous, ushering in the end of their pop career. None of their subsequent singles were bigger hits than No 24 and their third album “The House We Built” failed to make the Top 40. So what happened? It’s a question as old as The Rolling Stones that if I knew the answer to, I’d be a music industry mogul. If I had to guess though, I’d say that musical tastes moved on and, despite their consistency, Alisha’s Attic hadn’t established a big enough foothold in the charts to ride the changes. Ultimately, I think that’s a shame as I quite liked their quirky pop songs. However, “Wish I Were You” wasn’t their best work. It’s a bit slight and insubstantial to the point that the middle eight is essentially the sisters singing “I, I, I, I…” over and over. We didn’t need another Jim Diamond thanks! Things worked out for Shelly and Karen though as both have gone on to form successful careers as songwriters for other artists. Having been and done the pop star thing, presumably they don’t wish they were those people anymore.

Right who’s this? Oh it’s that woman with the huge hair again, Alda. She had a hit in 1998 with “Real Good Time” and she’s back with the follow up “Girls Night Out” which sounds very similar to its predecessor. No, not ‘very similar’ – exactly the same. As such, what else can I say about Alda who is originally from Iceland but relocated to London and now lives in…oh, this is just brilliant…High Barnet! This shizzle writes itself sometimes! What about her music you say? Well, it’s out and out pure pop confectionery – fine if that’s your flavour but too much of it would make you barf. Compared to her pop contemporaries like Robyn for example, she’s the cheap supermarket own brand equivalent of an M&S best seller – Home Bargains’ Claude The Caterpillar as opposed to M&S’s Colin The Caterpillar cake. No, not Claude The Caterpillar but Cuthbert because she’s more Aldi than Alda.

*I’ll get me coat*

Another new entry now and it’s from the Lighthouse Family. Now, I’ve defended this lot in the past on the basis that musical snobbery is wrong and that ridicule is nothing to be scared of but oh dear…this one…this one is just undeniably, irredeemably dreadful. Awful. Just no good.“Postcards From Heaven” was the title track from their second album and also the fifth single to be lifted (see what I did there?!) from it. That might explain why its peak of No 24 was the duo’s lowest chart position in a run of nine hits up to that point but I’m pretty sure it was because it was horseshit. It’s so insubstantial and slight and…dull. And it sounds just like all their other hits. Abject crap. Postcards from Heaven? More like delivery from the depths of Hell. Sorry guys but it turns out Adam Ant was wrong. Ridicule is something to be scared of.

Right, that’s your new tunes done with and so we’re back to the (very) familiar starting with a former (and indeed Christmas) No 1. Yes, the Spice Girls claimed the (then) coveted festive chart topper in 1998 with “Goodbye” and thereby became the first act to have three such consecutive hits since The Beatles in 1965. However it only stated stayed at the peak for one week hence the comment from Jamie Theakston about them getting on the wrong side of Chef’s “Salty Balls” as that was the record that deposed them. It was, in fact, the first No 1 single of 1999 but was not played on TOTP as an episode did not air the week of the 27th December 1998 to 2nd January 1999. So why didn’t “Salty Balls” feature on this particular show rather than “Goodbye”? Was it an issue with the lyrics? I mean, there’s a lot of innuendo in them but no actual swear words – I don’t think the single carried a Parental Advisory sticker did it? Whatever the reason, Chris Cowey chose not to go with Chef so we get a re-showing of a previous performance of “Goodbye”. As it turned out, this would be the group’s final TOTP appearance of the 90s and, therefore, also the last time I’ll be reviewing them in this blog. So, “Goodbye” indeed Sporty, Scary, Baby, Ginger and Posh. You came, you saw, you conquered – you spiced up our lives.

Who saw this coming? Steps at No 1? Seven weeks after it debuted at No 2, “Heartbeat/Tragedy” has risen to the top of the charts. It feels a bit like All Saints’ journey to No 1 with “Never Ever” which took weeks as well. Yes, its achievement was probably enabled by a lack of big new releases in the first week of January but still. In fairness, their last single “One For Sorrow” had peaked at No 2 and all three of their releases to this point had spent at least two months inside the Top 40 so maybe the clues had been there all along? “Heartbeat/Tragedy” took it to a new level though. Fifteen consecutive weeks inside the Top 10 including a month inside the Top 3 after it had relinquished the top spot – it was a chart monster.

In recognition of this success, we get a medley of the two tracks but it’s not a new performance but two separate appearances in the show cobbled together. Is it me or does it seem a bit of a shoddy edit? It’s not like when The Jam and Oasis were afforded two songs to celebrate their respective No 1s – the former’s “Town Called Malice” / “Precious” double A-side and the latter’s “Don’t Look Back In Anger” when they also performed their cover of Slade’s “Cum On Feel The Noize” which was an extra track on the CD single. Still, it was hardly a tragedy was it? Better best forgotten.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Bryan Adams and Melanie C	When You’re Gone	Nah
2	Honeyz	End Of The Line	Negative
3	Robbie Williams	No Regrets	Didn’t happen
4	Alisha’s Attic	Wish I Were You	Nope
5	Alda	Girls Night Out	Never
6	Lighthouse Family	Postcards From Heaven	Good Lord no!
7	Spice Girls	Goodbye	No
8	Steps	Heartbeat / Tragedy	I did not

Disclaimer

I make no claim to the rights of this show and all ownership and contents including logos and graphics belongs totally to the BBC or copyright holder(s).

All opinions on the music and artists featured are my own. Sorry if you don’t agree

TOTP 18 SEP 1998

Posted on November 17 by 80stastic

There was something going on with the scheduling and timing of shows at this point in TOTP history. The programmes were less than 30 minutes long it seems because the BBC had embarked upon a programme of repeating episodes of Fawlty Towers straight after our weekly dose of chart songs. As they were 35 minutes long, TOTP was truncated to allow them to fit. The Fawlty Towers episode being shown following this particular show was ‘Waldorf Salad’ which is one of my favourites. The scene where the American guest tells Basil to lay it on the line to his chef (who Basil has let go home early) that he’ll “bust his ass” if he hasn’t got the ingredients to make a Waldorf salad is just brilliant.

The other thing happening was that TOTP was being repeated in a late night slot, after midnight on Sunday morning, similar, I guess, to how these BBC4 repeats get shown again in the early hours. There’s something odd about the late night repeat of this show but we’ll get to that in time. Kate Thornton is our host and guess what? The first song of the night is last week’s No 1 which is no longer No 1 but which is being shown anyway. This was a standard and established Chris Cowey tactic by now as he fought to battle the constant flow of changing chart toppers. I get it (sort of) – why only show a big selling record just once especially if it hangs around the Top 10 for a while after debuting at No 1? However, the optics of this practice are odd – ending one show and beginning the next with the same song (and in some cases the same performance). Maybe that’s exaggerated though in these BBC4 repeats with two shows aired back to back. Was it not so noticeable at the time of original broadcast when seven days of viewers’ lives had passed since the last time they’d seen a performance of that song?

This week’s last week No 1 (if you get my drift) is “Booty Call” by All Saints who have dropped from the summit to No 7 in just one week which doesn’t bode well for a long lasting hit. Hang on, let me check the official charts database…

…no, it didn’t hang around the charts long at all. Just five weeks in the Top 40 in total and only two of those inside the Top 10. In fairness, it was the fourth single lifted from their album which had been out for about 10 months by this point so the fact that they’d got to No 1 at all was an achievement (or clever first week of release price discounting you might argue). The group (or record label London) weren’t done with that album just yet though and an improbable fifth single was released from it in late November and it made it to No 7. Presumably, this was to give the album a sales boost just before Christmas and also allowed them to add a promotional sticker to saying something along the lines of ‘includes the No 1s Never Ever, Under The Bridge/Lady Marmalade and Booty Call plus the Top 10 hits I Know Where It’s At and War Of Nerves’. I seem to recall that reorders of the album at this point did actually have such a sticker applied to them and it was green in colour to match the cover artwork. The things you remember. Now, where did I put my house keys?

Next up an American band whom I’m guessing, traditionally wouldn’t have had the ingredients for a Waldorf salad at the top of their rider list for their gigs. Anyway, Kate Thornton is suggesting to us that Aerosmith have put on a concert just for TOTP which can’t be right can it? She seems pretty convinced though; in fact she’s “full on” sure about it as she’s says the phrase twice in the space of a few seconds in her intro to “I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing”. Come on Kate – I thought you were a safe pair of hands.

As with All Saints, this was only on the show just last week as well. Now, after double checking the chart stats in this one, I can confirm that despite all the success this single had globally, in the UK it actually went down the charts from No 12 to No 14 this week in 1998. Despite that fall, Chris Cowey had it back on the show and this extra exposure would catapult it into the Top 10 where it would spend the next two months, peaking at No 4. So, the question is, would the worldwide success the song received have been replicated in the UK without Cowey’s decision to ignore them descending the charts and have them on the show again for a second consecutive week? And what was the reasoning behind that decision? Here’s a third question though – am I overestimating the influence and pull that TOTP wielded at this point? I fear I may be. Back in the 80s, the show could make or break a hit but in 1998 was that still the case? I’m not sure. Probably the fact that the film it was taken from – Armageddon – had been released in UK cinemas by this point maybe had something to do with the song’s success. Still, it’s best to consider all angles with these things. I wouldn’t want you to miss a thing after all.

Returning to Fawlty Towers, a writer in The Guardian once described Jarvis Cocker as having “long Basil Fawlty legs” and you can see where they were coming from as the two do share a similar physicality. Said physicality is centre stage in this performance which would prove to be a valedictory one for Pulp for the 90s. Yes, “Party Hard” was their last hit of the decade and also the final single to be released from their “This Is Hardcore” album. Following “Different Class” was always going to be a big ask but I’m not sure anybody would have predicted the disparity in sales that would unfold. “Different Class” went four times platinum selling over a million copies whilst “This Is Hardcore” would sell a tenth of that. This was reflected in the chart positions of the latter’s four singles which achieve the following peak positions:

8 – 12 – 22 – 29

In the case of “Party Hard”, its chances were hamstrung by the second CD single including remixes of the track that were too long to count as sales according to recently introduced chart eligibility regulations. Talk about an own goal. Written about clubbers having to come to terms with ageing out of the nightlife scene, it’s a decent song but hardly one of their most memorable. All the reviews I’ve read about it point to Jarvis’s vocal sounded (deliberately?) like David Bowie but if I hadn’t read that beforehand, I’m not sure I would have picked up on it. Maybe I’m just not a big enough Bowie aficionado. I did pick up on the strange look this performance has with the cheerleading-type dancers and the studio audience holding helium filled balloons behind the band which lends the balloons an unnatural look as if they were lollipops or something. I’m not completely convinced that it all hangs together cohesively to be honest. And talking of honesty, when was the last time I was in a nightclub? I think it was in Manchester in 1999 when I would have been 31 which does seem to be too old for that type of thing on reflection.

There are plenty of examples of music stars whose offspring have followed their parents into the charts. Off the top of my head there’s Billy Ray Cyrus/Miles Cyrus, Bob Marley/Ziggy Marley, Frank Sinatra/Nancy Sinatra and John Lennon/Julian Lennon. There’s a sub genre though that isn’t so easy to name examples from. Parents who were in a pop group whose children also went on to be in bands with their own siblings. How many are there out there? There’s Wilson Phillips, 3T and…erm…The Osmond Boys? Well, add to that list Alisha’s Attic who were sisters Shelley and Karen Poole, the daughters of Brian Poole of Brian Poole and The Tremeloes fame. Having established themselves as a bona fide chart artist in 1996/97 with four hit singles and a Top 20 album, the time had come to progress that success with a second album and they had a very consistent yardstick to live up to. Look at these chart peaks for those first four singles:

14 – 12 – 12 – 12

As it turned out, the lead single from that sophomore album would continue the streak admirably by going to No 13. “The Incidentals” was its title and it was more, thoughtful, tuneful, well constructed pop on which they had made their name. However, it didn’t really push any musical boundaries and was reliant on their fanbase wanting more of the same. Initially they did with parent album “Ilumnia” also going Top 20 but by the time of third album “The House We Built” in 2001, times and tastes had changed and it disappointed commercially with the duo splitting soon after.

Both sisters went on to be very successful songwriters for other artists including Kylie Minogue, Lily Allen, Rita Ora, Sugababes, Boyzone and Westlife. Shelley is also a member of alt-country band Red Sky July with her husband Ally McErlaine (ex of Texas) who my wife caught recently as support for Eddie Reader at the Cottingham Folk Festival. Very good they were too apparently.

Whilst looking into the career history of the Honeyz, I discovered that they had appeared on ITV’s The Big Reunion show in 2013. The premise of the show was to get seven acts who were big in the 90s to reform and rehearse for a comeback show at the Hammersmith Apollo. Basically, it was a steal of MTV’s Bands Reunited from a decade earlier. Anyway, some of The Big Reunion episodes are on YouTube so I checked the Honeyz one out and one of the revelations that came out was that one of the members of the band couldn’t really sing, used to have her microphone turned off when performing and was only recruited for her looks! I’ll leave you to guess who that was but it got me thinking about members of bands throughout musical history who didn’t really do anything. Now, I’m not saying I agree that the people on the list below contributed nothing at all but that in some people’s/the media’s perception, they didn’t:

Sid Vicious (Sex Pistols)
Andrew Ridgeley (Wham!)
Bez (Happy Mondays)
Paul Rutherford (Frankie Goes To Hollywood)
Craig ‘Ken’ Logan (Bros)
Anyone in Boyzone who wasn’t Ronan Keating or Stephen Gately

OK, the last one is a bit facetious but you get my point. As for the Honeyz, OK it was Naima Belkhiati who had her microphone turned off (allegedly), the one on the left in this performance. There, she’s been “Finally Found” out.

No! Surely not?! It can’t be?! The aforementioned Boyzone are on the show AGAIN?! WHY?! That’s five out of the last six weeks they’ve featured. Yes, OK “No Matter What” was No 1 for three of those appearances and it stayed at No 3 for three consecutive weeks after that but even so!

Look, I’ve nothing else to say about this one. Instead, here’s Basil Fawlty to describe my frustration at its reappearance with actions saying much more than my words ever could.

Right, this is the point where this episode gets a bit complicated as previously mentioned. The version of the show that I watched and that exists currently on iPlayer featured T–Spoon and a track called “Sex On The Beach” which was at No 2 in the charts. However, back in 1998, the version that aired in the show’s usual early evening slot had Steps “One For Sorrow” on in place of T-Spoon. When the late night repeat aired in the early hours of Sunday morning, it was T-Spoon and not Steps who featured. So what gives? Well, apparently the BBC had received complaints from listeners to the Radio 1 Chart Show the previous Sunday when “Sex On The Beach” was played having debuted at No 2. Apparently, the lyrics “I wanna have sex on the beach, come on move your body” which are repeated throughout were the cause of the offence and so the BBC took the decision to not show it in the pre-watershed show at 7.30 as originally intended. However, presumably to pacify all those involved in the T-Spoon hit, a performance was recorded and it was shown (instead of Steps) in the late night rerun. Was the BBC right to take such action? On reflection, it seems a peculiar hill to die on. There have been far more controversial records to have charted and appear on the show than this one surely?! Just recently, a 1998 TOTP repeat included “Horny” by Mousse T – was that not cut from a similar cloth? Or was it the use of the word ‘sex’ that rattled the BBC powers that be? If so, how come “Generation Sex” by The Divine Comedy was on the very next week? I’ve checked out the rest of the lyrics and I’m not convinced they were a danger to the moral well being of the nation’s youth to be honest. Most of it I can’t understand anyway but there’s a reference to ‘ding-a-ling’, a term which didn’t stop Chuck Berry having a No 1 hit in 1972 based on the double entendre. Anyway, what’s surely more offensive is the way the thing sounded which was atrocious. I think I spotted the following influences in its composition:

The naffness of Peter Andre
The ‘toasting’ style of Chaka Demus and Pliers
The hollow production of Ace Of Base
The inane sing-along chanting of Inner Circle’s “Sweat (A La La La La Long)”

It’s hardly a ringing endorsement. As for T-Spoon, they defended themselves by stating that “Sex On The Beach” referred to the name of the infamous cocktail but nobody was really buying that. The whole thing was a sorry episode from start to finish.

Robbie Williams has bagged his first No 1 single with ”Millennium” and to celebrate that he’s performing the song in a dress and not just any dress but a sheer, floor length gown through which you could see his undergarments. I guess the obvious question is ‘why?’. So I asked AI. It had an answer for me which I could have guessed if I’d thought about it a bit more. According to AI it was a “provocative and attention-grabbing choice…designed to be memorable and push boundaries”. Yes, probably. Or was he just copying David Beckham wearing a sarong skirt just a few months earlier which caused a tabloid frenzy? In any case, he wasn’t the first nor the last music star to don a dress. David Bowie was famously photographed in a cream and blue satin dress whilst reclining on a chaise lounge for the cover of the UK release of his “The Man Who Sold The World” album. In 2020, Harry Styles was the first male to feature on the cover of Vogue magazine and he did so wearing a Gucci dress and just to come full circle on this post, although I don’t think Basil Fawlty ever wore a dress, I’m pretty sure John Cleese has at some point in his career.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	All Saints	Booty Call	It’s a no from me
2	Aerosmith	I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing	Negative
3	Pulp	Party Hard	I did not
4	Alisha’s Attic	The Incidentals	Nope
5	Honeyz	Finally Found	Nah
6	Boyzone	No Matter What	Big NO
7	T-Spoon	Sex On The Beach	As if
8	Robbie Williams	Millennium	And no

Disclaimer

I make no claim to the rights of this show and all ownership and contents including logos and graphics belongs totally to the BBC or copyright holder(s).

All opinions on the music and artists featured are my own. Sorry if you don’t agree

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002lvjr/top-of-the-pops-18091998

TOTP 14 MAR 1997

Posted on February 7 by 80stastic

The era of Chris Cowey as TOTP executive producer may not have properly got underway yet but there have been some changes made already. Whether it’s down to this John L. Spencer guy who’s listed in the credits as the show’s director for some of this period or from higher above I’m not sure but what I do know is that the direct to camera piece at the start of the show by a featuring act has disappeared and the vintage clip advertising the TOTP2 brand at its end has also gone. I think I prefer it like this. The top and tail approach always seemed a bit clunky. Tonight’s host is Ian Broudie from the Lightning Seeds who’s got the gig for a second time in a short period – somebody on the show clearly really liked him but he’s not the most effervescent of presenters is he?

Anyway, we start with an absolute banger! I have a personal (albeit a bit tenuous) connection to this one – it’s “What Do You Want From Me” by Monaco. With New Order on hiatus following the release and promotion of the “Republic” album, the band members pursued side projects to give formation to their creativity. Whilst couple Stephen Morris and Gillian Gilbert worked together on their The Other Two material, Bernard Sumner always had the Electronic collective to fall back on. As for Peter Hook, thoughts that he might reactivate his late 80s/early 90s band Revenge were way off the mark as he came up with a new entity altogether in Monaco. I say new but his partner in this endeavour was David Potts who had been a part of Revenge but you get my drift. “What Do You Want From Me” was their first and biggest hit when it peaked at No 11. Accusations of being New Order-lite were as inevitable as they were obvious but none of that detracted from the general consensus that it was a great tune. Hooky’s distinctive bass playing style was allied to a catchy as hell ‘sha-la-la’ chorus that was both suitable for daytime radio and to maintain a lofty position in the credibility stakes.

So then. This personal connection story. Well, there was a lot of excitement about the release of this single at the Our Price in Stockport where I was working as David Potts had been one of us not so long before. Yes, the guy up there on our TV screens opening TOTP? We knew him! Now admittedly some of my colleagues knew ‘Pottsy’ better than me but I had worked with him for a brief period of a few months in the Manchester Piccadilly branch a couple of years before and his then girlfriend worked on a Saturday at the Stockport store at this time. As such, we were very aware of Monaco and were desperate for their single to be a big hit. I guess it was – No 11 was not to be sniffed at. Obviously we all bought “What Do You Want From Me” and aside from that track there’s also a fabulous song as the B-side called “Bicycle Thieves” presumably inspired by the 1948 Italian film of the same name. The CD single also featured an instrumental version of the title track and there’s a hidden bit that kicks in at the end after the track has finished which is basically a man laughing almost maniacally over a what sounds like a Wurlitzer organ. The guy doing the laughing was someone I’ve mentioned before in this blog, a larger than life character who was well known in Manchester as ‘Mirror Man’ on account of the way that he would talk to you through a hand held mirror. His real name was Ray and he used to wear a bus driver’s uniform despite the fact that he didn’t work on the buses and he would come into the shop where I worked and refer to all the staff by pop star names (I was Billy Idol for some reason). Anyway, Ray had this amazing, enormous, fill-the-room laugh and somehow he made it into the end of that Monaco track. RIP Ray.

As for Monaco, that initial success only sustained for one more single though their album “Music For Pleasure” matched the chart high of “What Do you Want From Me” and sold 500,000 copies worldwide. They split in 2000 but have come together again as part of Peter Hook and the Light playing New Order and Joy Division songs to live audiences. I caught them a few years back supporting Happy Mondays at an outdoor gig in Hull. I wasn’t anywhere near the front so there was no chance of Pottsy seeing me but even if he had I doubt he would have remembered me. It was all a long time ago after all.

We’re coming to the end of the era of Ant & Dec as pop stars but we’re not quite there yet. “Shout” was their twelfth consecutive Top 40 hit though only the third to make the Top 10. Sadly, it was not a cover of the Tears For Fears hit (though Wikipedia tells me that the lyrics of the chorus were influenced by it) but thankfully neither was it the duo’s take on that Lulu song. What it was though was quite a change of pace to those preceding hits. A slowed down number that verges on melancholy, one definite influence on it was the bass line from Lou Reed’s “Walk On The Wild Side”.

I recall being almost impressed by their ability to change direction but on reflection, just as with Eternal’s “Don’t You Love Me” in the last post, I think I may have exaggerated its quality. Firstly, there’s the sixth form ‘state of the nation’ lyrics and then there’s the image of Dec on the guitar. Really?! Can he actually play the instrument? I’m no virtuoso but I have had a few lessons down the years and having looked at the chord shapes his left hand is making, they might be correct but his strumming action is not convincing at all. With this change of pace and public face (Ant on solo lead vocals and Dec sat down with a guitar), what then didn’t make sense to me was the fact that they’d ditched the pop star career by the end of the year*. Why try out a new sound if you had no intention of carrying on? I’m sure, given the longevity of their TV careers, that they would argue it was clearly the correct decision and to be fair to them, they’d be right.

*I’m ignoring the 2002 World Cup song “We’re On The Ball”.

A bit of admin for Ian Broudie next as he explains why Kula Shaker weren’t on the show last week despite going straight into the charts at No 2 with their cover of “Hush”. Well, they were meant to be on but singer Crispian Mills had a sore throat and so was tucked up in bed with his actor Mum Hayley looking after him. OK, that makes sense except why have they just shown the video this time. Why wouldn’t they have just done that last week when it was at its chart peak rather than when it had slipped four places down the chart? The way the charts were back then, John L. Spencer or whoever must have known there was a chance the single would slip after its first week position. Ah well, the thing was that with Ric Blaxill gone some of the appearance rules with regard to chart positions seemed to be…well…disregarded. Songs would be featured on consecutive weeks which historically would only happen if it was the No 1 single. Also, those going down the charts would be featured, again in contravention of previous norms and conventions. To disguise this practice, the artist/title/chart position captions have been removed from the start of the performance and added in right at the end. Sneaky.

Anyway, Kula Shaker and “Hush”. I’m guessing this was the classic standalone single to bridge the gap between albums tactic. Debut “K” came out in September 1996 whilst follow up “Peasants, Pigs & Astronauts” didn’t arrive until March of 1999. So long was the wait that the lead single for the latter – “Mystical Machine Gun” – was released nearly twelve months before the parent album. Now, being a pop kid, Deep Purple who had recorded “Hush” in 1968 had never interested me so I’m not sure if I even knew the song before this but when I did finally hear it, I liked it. My research tells me that the Deep Purple version itself was a cover with the original song recorded by country singer Billy Joe Royal and was written by Joe South who also wrote “Rose Garden” that became a hit for Lynn Anderson which I think my parents had. So I’m guessing that “Hush” wasn’t an out and out heavy rock song which may explain why I was open to the charms of the Kula Shaker version? Hush my mouth!

Here’s another band whose name I remember but I couldn’t tell you how one of their songs went. 3 Colours Red (their name came from putting a pin in London listing magazine Time Out and landing on an advert for the final film of the Three Colours trilogy) would rack up six UK chart hits before the end of the 90s. This one – “Sixty Mile Smile” – courted some controversy when rumours circulated that it was about lead singer Pete Vučković’s hospitalisation after a bad ecstasy trip. This sort of thing did not go down well in the media back then – just ask Brian Harvey.

The majority of the band’s hits would peak between Nos 30 and 20 except 1999’s “Beautiful Day” which was their biggest reaching No 11. There seemed to be a few bands in this period like 3 Colours Red that had a big enough fanbase to ensure that every single they released would be a medium sized hit which would then fall away dramatically – I’m thinking Gene, Therapy? and Terrorvision (apart from that “Tequila” hit of course). Having listened to “Sixty Mile Smile” in the present day, my opinion would be that it’s a decent sound without being anywhere near exceptional. 6/10 is about right in my book.

Like “Hush” before it, here’s another hit that had already reached its peak position and was on its way down the charts though this one was at least holding in the same position for two weeks running. “Encore Une Fois” by Sash! would actually prove to be a very hardy and resilient track taking another month after this before it even departed the Top 10 and spending twelve weeks in the Top 40 altogether. Apparently this German DJ/production team hold the record for the most amount of No 2 hits (five in total) without ever having a chart topper. That’s a lot of No 2s! You can make your own jokes up…

Talking of artists who had a run of hits that peaked at the same chart position each time, check out Alisha’s Attic’s chart stats for their first five singles:

14 – 12 – 12 – 12 – 13

Now that’s consistency. “Indestructible” came bang in the middle of that run and was the third track to be released from the sister duo’s debut album “Alisha Rules The World”. I remember this as being better than it was listening back to it now. It’s all very pleasant and has a dreamy quality but ultimately it comes off as a bit insubstantial. Perhaps the CGI video that was probably cutting edge at the time isn’t helping by dating it rather so probably not indestructible after all.

Right, this messing around with the TOTP appearance rules has got out of hand now. Why the hell are No Mercy on again?! Their hit “Where Do You Go” has been on the show at least three times now and this is the fourth week in a row that it has gone down the charts! Make it make sense! I’ve also noticed that as well as shifting the artist/title/chart position graphic to the end of the performance, there’s no longer an arrow indicating that a song was climbing the charts. That used to be a thing didn’t it? Surely the chart countdown graphic had something like that which it doesn’t appear to anymore. It all stinks a bit of hoodwinking the TV audience to me.

Ian Broudie refers to the next artist as his showbiz mates and I don’t think he’s making it up as he did produce their debut album and one of them clearly says “Thanks Ian” as the camera pans from him to the band. Our host was talking about Dodgy whom he also refers to as “probably the best group in the country”. Hmm. It’s a bold claim. Whilst I did quite like them, I don’t think I’d have gone that far. They’re in the studio to perform their latest hit “Found You” which was the fourth and final track lifted from their “Free Peace Sweet” album. Looking at their discography, this could be the last time we see them on TOTP as they only had one more Top 40 hit in 1998 and that only made No 32. What is their legacy? As I said, I quite liked their jaunty, melodic brand of Britpop (if that’s what they were) but sadly if you type the word ‘dodgy’ into a search engine, you more likely to be prompted to look for ‘dodgy fire stick’ than the band.

The Spice Girls are No 1 (of course they are) with double A-side “Mama/Who Do You Think You Are”. We get the latter song this week and it really is a great pop track. An instant floor filler – contemporary sounding but with a retro disco style flavour (I think they called it nu-disco). Despite not having her own solo part on any of the verses, it’s Melanie C’s vocals that stand out and hold it all together with her counterpoint harmonies. In a glorious bit of symmetry, she would appear in 2024 in Series 21 of the genealogy show Who Do You Think You Are, the only Spice Girl to do so up to now.

As mentioned previously, the plug for TOTP2 has gone and is replaced by a play out video of a current song. This week we get “Rumble In The Jungle” by the Fugees featuring A Tribe Called Quest, Busta Rhymes and John Forté. Taken from the soundtrack to the documentary When We Were Kings about the Muhammad Ali /George Foreman boxing match that took place in the former Zaire in 1974, it famously features the bass line from ABBA’s “The Name Of The Game” and the melody from “Angel Of The Morning” made famous by Juice Newton. Now apparently, the Fugees’ record label Columbia had planned to rerelease “Fu-Gee-La” as the group’s next single and had even sent out promo copies to radio stations to plug the track. However, in America, Mercury Records released the When We Were Kings soundtrack and “Rumble In The Jungle” to promote it which led to canny record dealers in the UK getting hold of import copies of the single and selling them over here thus undermining any potential sales for “Fu-Gee-La”. In the end, Columbia relented and the planned rerelease never happened leaving the way clear for an official release for “Rumble In The Jungle” which made No 3. As with Dodgy, I think this might be our last glimpse of the Fugees on TOTP. For a group of such influence, the small size of their discography seems like a contradiction.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen the documentary all the way through which I should probably correct one day. I do know that Ali won the fight and was massively popular in Zaire where he won over the locals with his charm. Of course, the Fugees song wasn’t the first to use the Rumble In The Jungle as its subject matter. There is also this…

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Monaco	What Do You Want From Me	YES!
2	Ant & Dec	Shout	NO!
3	Kula Shaker	Hush	Negative
4	3 Colours Red	Sixty Mile Smile	Nah
5	Sash!	Encore Une Fois	Never
6	Alisha’s Attic	Indestructible	Nope
7	No Mercy	Where Do You Go	As if
8	Dodgy	Found You	No but my wife had the album
9	Spice Girls	Mama/Who Do You Think You Are	I did not
10	Fugees	Rumble In The Jungle	And no

Disclaimer

I make no claim to the rights of this show and all ownership and contents including logos and graphics belongs totally to the BBC or copyright holder(s).

All opinions on the music and artists featured are my own. Sorry if you don’t agree.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0027fvz/top-of-the-pops-14031997?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 01 NOV 1996

Posted on November 26, 2024 by 80stastic

Right, for this post there’ll be no mentions of football or my past drunken escapades like in recent weeks – it’ll just be all about the music and TOTP which is what this blog is meant to be all about after all. So let’s examine what was happening with the grand old show at this point in time. Well, it had been through a number of changes in 1996. An initially temporary but ultimately permanent move from Thursday to Friday was seismic enough but that was added to by the allocation of a new time slot to boot. The there was the whole relaunch of archive show TOTP2 which seems to hijack the parent programme to help with its promotion. We had the ‘flashback’ slot which featured a hit from (mainly) the corresponding week from years back plus the play out video was taken over directly by TOTP2 to preview an old clip that would be on that week’s show. It definitely felt as if the BBC’s iconic music show was being put out to pasture. Whether executive producer Ric Blaxill felt this as well or just thought it was time for a new career, he would bring about another huge change by leaving the show at the start of 1997. Yes, the Blaxill era was coming to an end. On the whole, I think he did a decent job of resurrecting TOTP after the ‘year zero’ revamp experiment ultimately failed. The ‘golden mic’ presenter idea worked for the most part and if nothing else, he consigned the dreadful Simon Mayo to history as a host. Inevitably, I think the ‘golden mic’ feature got used to promote other BBC programmes and projects. Falling into this category were the likes of Dennis Pennis (Paul Kaye), The Fast Show cast and in this week’s episode Julian Clary who had recovered from the fall out of his infamous appearance at the British Comedy Awards in 1993 where he made that joke about Norman Lamont to have his own BBC series All Rise For Julian Clary that was on air at this time.

Anyway, whatever the reason for his filling the slot (he’d make a joke out of that wouldn’t he?), Clary’s first job is to introduce a song called “Place Your Hands” which prompts the first wry smile of the night from Julian. Now the first line of Reef’s biggest ever hit is “place your hands on my hope” but if you have subtitles turned on in your settings whilst watching it on iPlayer (like I did), then they will tell you that the first line is “place your hands on my hole”! Just as well that isn’t the actual lyric – Julian would have had a field day. My crack about ‘filling the slot’ is tame in comparison. What? ‘My crack’? Oh that’s enough now! Just stop it! Let’s get back to the music please! Right – well, “Place Your Hands” was quite the rousing tune, combining a funk feel with some rock riffs, coming on like the UK’s answer to Red Hot Chili Peppers – singer Gary Stringer even had Anthony Kiedis style long hair. However, the bass player looked very un-rock ‘n’ roll with his glasses, sensible haircut and roll up sweater – at one point he seems to do a choreographed stroll on the spot akin to the famous walk like The Shadows used to do. I have to say though that I liked the song even the weird bit in the middle where Stringer takes an age to get out the line “ooh it’s a celebration”. Someone who hated it though was my work colleague Mike who really objected to Stringer’s vocal interjection of “Alright now” which he repeats through the song. I’m not sure why it irked him so much but irk him it did and made the whole ding unlistenable for him.

However, what I’ll always associate “Place Your Hands” with is the parody of it that they recorded as a jingle for a section in the show TFI Friday called ‘It’s Your Letters’…

Is there a better example of a dance act being a great singles artist but lousy at selling albums than Livin’ Joy? Between 1995 and 1997 they had five UK hit singles including a No 1, two that made the Top 10 and two that peaked inside the Top 20 with all of them featuring on their album “Don’t Stop Movin’” and yet said album would only spend two weeks on the charts peaking at No 41. Such statistics would take some explaining for a rock/pop artist and yet for a dance combo it seemed to be industry standard. Was it a case of punters identifying with the song not the singer? Possibly. Would a track that went down a storm in the clubs be all about the bpm rather than any attachment to the actual person singing it? Were dance artists not promoted in the same way as a pop group with less focus on their visual image and more on their sound? I don’t know – maybe I’m just talking b******s. For the record, “Follow The Rules” peaked at No 9 and spent and three weeks inside the Top 40.

Now like me, you may only be able to name one song by Alisha’s Attic without looking at their Wikipedia page but they actually had eight in total. I know – eight! “I Am, I Feel” was the first (which is the one I know) which peaked at No 14 and started a peculiar run of chart positions up until their last Top 40 entry in 2001. Look at these numbers:

14 – 12 – 12 – 12 – 13 – 29 – 34 – 24

Adding to that, their first two albums peaked at Nos 14 and 15. These girls weee nothing if not consistent. “Alisha Rules The World” was the first of that run of three consecutive No 12 hits and on first hearing seemed quite insubstantial and yet it stuck in my mind for hours afterwards. How did they do that? Maybe it was in their genes – they are the daughters of Brian Poole as in Brian Poole and The Tremeloes fame after all so perhaps they were always destined to be able to craft catchy tunes. Both sisters have gone onto have successful careers as songwriters – Shelley has worked with the likes of Janet Jackson, Boyzone and Westlife whilst Karen has written songs for all sorts of people including Sugababes, Kylie Minogue and Will Young. In 2021, she was honoured with the Best Music Creative Award at the Music Week Women In Music Awards. Together as Alisha’s Attic they received an Ivor Novello nomination for best lyrical and melodic composition. Meanwhile, Shelley extended the rock family tree by marrying Texas guitarist Ally McErlaine in 2001.

The careers of Madonna and Jimmy Nail had the rather unlikely habit of running into each other since the mid 80s when they both recorded a cover of the Rose Royce classic “Love Don’t Live Here Anymore”. Nail took his version to No 3 in the UK off the back of his success in the role of Oz in ITV comedy/drama Auf Wiedersehen, Pet. Madonna’s cover was in included on her 1984 album “Like A Virgin” and also made its way onto her 1995 ballads collection “Something To Remember”. They then crossed paths again on the film version of Evita with Madonna in the title role and Nail playing Argentine singer Agustín Magaldi. Finally, would you believe it, they’re on the same edition of TOTP though Madonna isn’t in the studio in person as Jimmy is. Madge’s appearance comes courtesy of the video for “You Must Love Me” from the Evita soundtrack whilst Nail is here to promote the soundtrack from his latest TV series Crocodile Shoes II but more of that later.

Nail’s role in Evita wasn’t the first time he’d played a character who had a connection to Argentina. The aforementioned Oz was shown working in the Falkland Islands at the start of the second series of Auf Wiedersehen, Pet whilst episode eight of said series is based around Oz’s marriage to his wife Marjorie and is called Marjorie Doesn’t Live Here Anymore – I love a bit of intertextuality me.

Julian Clary almost crosses the line into Lamont territory in his next intro by saying that he’d been searching for the hero inside himself for ages but couldn’t find him. However, he did find a couple of lorry drivers. Ooh err and, indeed, missus. Ric Blaxill must have known what he was getting when he booked Julian for the gig so he shouldn’t have been surprised.

Anyway, back to the music and after two consecutive chart hits, Space (or their label) decided that a rerelease of an earlier single that failed to make the grade was in order. “Neighbourhood” originally made No 56 on the UK charts in March of 1996, just a couple of months before their Top 40 breakthrough with “Female Of The Species”. The revisit to “Neighbourhood” would peak at No 11. It’s possibly my favourite tune of theirs just because it’s entrancing in a beguiling sort of way – I can’t help but be drawn to it even though I know it shouldn’t really work. It’s basically one of those ‘list’ songs which in this case is a roll call of residents of a fictional neighbourhood which was based upon the real life area of the Cantril Farm Estate that singer Tommy Scott grew up in. There’s just something very intriguing about the song’s sound, be it the twangy guitar punctuations or Mariachi style vibe that runs throughout it which gives it the feel of a spaghetti western soundtrack.

Then there’s the characters in the lyrics which reference transvestites, “big butch queens” and the “local vicar” who’s a “serial killer “. That last one puts me in mind of another song with a narrative about a vicar who isn’t all he seems to be…

As I write this, this week sees the 40th anniversary of the release of “Do They Know It’s Christmas” and so it seems rather apt that the ‘flashback’ slot features one of its protagonists in all his mid 80s, big hair glory. Here’s what I had to say about “Freedom” by Wham! in my 80s blog…

TOTP 11 OCT 1984

In an era when singles could be in and out of the chart within a fortnight, “Un-Break My Heart” by Toni Braxton was one of those hits that bucked the trend. It would spend 11 consecutive weeks inside the UK Top 5 peaking at No 2 on two separate occasions matching the high of her other big hit “Breathe Again”. I say ‘other’ big hit but she did have more than those two. Indeed, “You’re Makin’ Me High” had been as high as No 7 back in July but I don’t remember that one at all. There are a few other hits but “Un-Break My Heart” and “Breathe Again” are surely what Toni Braxton will be remembered for. Indeed, the former is also the title of a TV film biography made about the singer that premiered in 2016. I was genuinely shocked that she was considered a big enough name to receive that level of attention. Maybe I shouldn’t have been as “Un-Break My Heart” would spend 11 weeks at No 1 in America and has sold over two million copies over there whilst also going double platinum in the UK. Did I like it? Well, R&B ballads aren’t really my thing so I was fairly immune to its appeal but I can appreciate that Toni has a fine set of pipes and gives Whitney Houston a run for her money with her vocal performance with this type of track. If I recall correctly, there was also a dance version of the song which may have helped to extend its chart life, covering all bases as it were. Given its longevity in our Top 5, I’m guessing we’ll be seeing this one on a TOTP repeat coming soon so I’ll leave it there for now.

And so back to the aforementioned Jimmy Nail who is this week’s ’exclusive performance’ with the lead single from the soundtrack to Crocodile Shoes II called “Country Boy”. My mate Robin tipped me off that this was all kinds of wrong and that the last two syllables of the title of his song were redundant. Ouch! Is Robin right? Well, certainly the choice of stage costumes is a bit dodgy. What was with the schoolboy outfits and the fake black eye? Was it some sort of homage to AC/DC’s Angus Young? Was it something to do with the TV show? I’ve never watched either series but I’m guessing not seeing as it was about a Country & Western club singer who makes it big in Nashville. However, I don’t actually mind the song. It kind of reminds me of this by The Big Dish which is a great track…

The line about the “devil’s daughter” though always reminds me of another example of alliteration featuring El Diablo…

I’m on record in this blog as saying that there are worst things you could do with some free time on your hands than listen to Jimmy’s Best Of album called “The Nail File” (see what he did there?). There’s some decent tunes on there including three written by the wonderful Paddy McAloon of Prefab Sprout fame and you can’t go wrong with a bit of Paddy. Robin though will be relieved to know that this was Jimmy’s final ever UK Top 40 hit though he will be back on a TOTP repeat one last time soon for another performance of “Country Boy”. Leave those last two syllables alone Robin!

Now to a collaboration between two acts that came about by a circumstance of scheduling but which would give both artists one of their biggest ever hits (though not the biggest in either case). Booked to appear on the same French pop music show, East 17 and Gabrielle were asked to do a song together to fulfil a regular feature of said show and picked a track that had been massive in America but which had hardly registered over here. “If You Ever” had been a No 2 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 for R&B quartet Shai in 1992 but audience reaction to the boys from Walthamstow and the girl from Hackney’s version was so positive that it was decided that they should record their own version together. The resulting track would make No 2 in the UK charts just falling short of matching the feat of both Gabrielle’s “Dreams” and East 17’s “Stay Another Day”. In the case of the latter, it was used to spearhead their Greatest Hits album that was released three days after this TOTP aired. Its release prompted stories that the bad were about to split which were vehemently denied but Brian Harvey would be sacked within months after a late night radio interview in which he admitted to taking the drug ecstasy. As for Gabrielle, “If You Ever” would become her fourth and biggest hit of 1996.

As with Toni Braxton earlier, the song was an R&B ballad that featured a flourish of Spanish guitar in the middle eight – it must have been a thing back then – and is actually better than I remember (though that’s not saying much). It’s billed as East 17 featuring Gabrielle though in truth it might as well have been promoted as Brian Harvey and Gabrielle as it’s basically a duet between the two. Tony Mortimer plays some keyboards in this performance whilst ‘the other two’ are relegated not only to doing some swaying and backing vocals but physically as well as they are positioned some distance behind Brian and Gabrielle on stage though you could probably make a case that this happened on pretty much every East 17 release. Also like “Un-Break My Heart”, “If You Ever” was also remarkably durable charts wise staying in the Top 10 for five consecutive weeks including three inside the Top 3. We’ll surely be seeing this one again as well.

It’s a second and final week at the top for “Say You’ll Be There” by the Spice Girls. Interestingly, the A&R people at Virgin had wanted this to be the debut single for the group instead of “Wannabe”. Their manager Simon Fuller agreed with the label with both of the opinion that it was a much cooler song but the group got their way and the rest is history. Would it have made any difference to the Spice Girls story if Virgin/Fuller had won out instead? I’m not sure and I guess we’ll never know but I’m thinking that the juggernaut of their success would have been “Too Much” to “Stop” (ahem).

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Reef	Place Your Hands	It’s in the singles box – it’s a yes!
2	Livin’ Joy	Follow The Rules	Negative
3	Alisha’s Attic	Alisha Rules The World	I did not
4	Madonna	You Must Love Me	No I mustn’t
5	Space	Neighbourhood	No but my wife had the album
6	Wham!	Freedom	No but we all had a Wham! Best Of didn’t we?
7	Toni Braxton	Un-Break My Heart	Nah
8	Jimmy Nail	Country Boy	Nope
9	East 17 / Gabrielle	If You Ever	Didn’t happen
10	Spice Girls	Say You’ll Be There	And no

Disclaimer

I make no claim to the rights of this show and all ownership and contents including logos and graphics belongs totally to the BBC or copyright holder(s).

All opinions on the music and artists featured are my own. Sorry if you don’t agree.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0024zk8/top-of-the-pops-01111996?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 02 AUG 1996

Posted on October 10, 2024 by 80stastic

We’re still in the Summer of 1996 with these TOTP repeats and we have another guest host in the ‘golden mic’ slot. In any other year, Jas Mann of Babylon Zoo would have got nowhere near this gig but this was the year of “Spaceman” and the stardust of that No 1 hit was still just about glittering over him enough to allow this appearance. It wouldn’t last much longer.

We start though with another guy who, by my reckoning, was also still very fortunate to be appearing on the show. Why was Sean Maguire still having hits two years on from his first one?! “Don’t Pull Your Love” was his seventh of eight in total ranging in size from No 27 to No 12. How could this be true? He couldn’t give away either of his albums which both sank without trace but somehow he managed to keep churning out a string of reasonably successful singles. How? Why? Yeah, he’d been in EastEnders so he was a familiar face and he didn’t look like the back end of a bus but I would have thought he’d have one, maybe two hits at most before the novelty wore off. He was quite the anomaly.

It can’t have been that the quality of the songs he was being given were irresistible to the record buying public can it? Surely not. Listening to this one, it sounds like something The Osmonds might have recorded back in the day. It wasn’t was it?

*checks internet*

No but it was a hit in the 70s by an act called Hamilton, Joe Frank & Reynolds who took it to No 4 in the US selling over a million copies. I knew I was in the right ballpark.

I’ve never heard of them until this moment but apparently they also had an American No 1 called “Fallin’ In Love” and get this, it was covered in 1995 by German Eurodance outfit La Bouche. Wait, I didn’t review it in this blog did I?

*checks internet again*

No, it wasn’t a hit over here so it wouldn’t have been on TOTP. However, the song was in the news again in 2009 when it was sampled by the rapper Drake for his track “Best I Ever Had” which led to a lawsuit being brought against him by Playboy Enterprises who owned the rights to “Fallin’ In Love” as Drake hadn’t sought clearance for the sample. What has any of this to do with Sean Maguire? Not much but it’s surely more interesting than his pop career no?

Rivalling Jas Mann in the famous for 15 minutes stakes were the next act OMC. Yes, the difference between being a one hit wonder and a legendary electronic band who are still going 44 years after their first hit is just one letter apparently. However, whereas the name Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark didn’t mean anything and was chosen by Andy McCluskey and Paul Humphreys to ensure they weren’t mistaken for a punk band, OMC was an acronym for Otara Millionaires Club and was a tongue-in-cheek reference to Otara’s status as one of the poorest suburbs in Auckland, New Zealand. Their hit was “How Bizarre” which lived up to its name by being a strange concoction of mariachi guitars, tejano trumpets, almost spoken word verses (I’m not sure it qualifies as rapping) and harmonised backing vocals.

What was also atypical about the single was the amount of time it took to become a hit and its chart positions when it finally made it. It took five weeks to break into the Top 10 (including two consecutive weeks at No 19) and then spent six weeks there four of which were at No 8. It would eventually sell 400,000 copies in the UK despite never getting higher than No 5. Not surprisingly though, it topped the charts in Australia and New Zealand. Why was it such a sleeper hit? Maybe it didn’t attract enough airplay initially but when radio finally caught on to it, they realised it was perfect for summertime playlists. My wife loved this and indeed bought the CD single which might still be knocking about somewhere. Though the idea in today’s world of searching it out to put in a CD player when you could just say “Alexa play OMC” does indeed seem bizarre.

If 1996 was Jas Mann’s season in the sun, it was an annus mirabilis for Alanis Morissette. Her “Jagged Little Pill” album was No 1 for weeks and she had three hit singles, each of which charted higher than the one before. “Head Over Feet” was the biggest of those peaking at No 7. Given that so many people were buying the album and therefore already had access to those tracks, that was quite a feat. This particular single seemed almost laid back compared to some of its predecessors like “You Oughta Know” and “Ironic” which had themes of anger and dissatisfaction. By contrast, “Head Over Feet” contained lyrics that talked about falling in love with your best friend. That didn’t mean it was lacking a punch though – it was still in the heavyweight class.

Curiously, there were two videos for the song – the ‘head’ version does what it says on the tin with a camera permanently fixed on a close up of Alanis’s face as she sings whilst the ‘feet’ promo for the European market that we see here is in black and white and has her sat around a camp fire in what looks like a building site with her band, sat cross legged, all strumming guitars. I think I prefer the ‘head’ one as its more affecting. Could it also have been the inspiration for Radiohead’s “No Surprises” which saw Thom Yorke singing under duress in a see through helmet as it filled with water?

Despite all of Alanis’s success in 1996, she would finish the year with a flop single when “All I Really Want” failed to make the Top 40. It seemed six singles from the same album was going too far even for Morissette’s growing army of fans.

Noel Gallagher once said that there was a time in Oasis’s career when everything the band released sounded like “Get It On” by T-Rex. Well, in 1996, was everything starting to sound a bit like Alanis Morissette? OK, Alisha’s Attic were hardly a carbon copy but could their hit “I Am, I Feel” be described as a poppier version of the Canadian singer? Maybe it’s just because they followed Alanis on this particular show that they somehow fused together in my head or maybe it’s to do with that aforementioned anger that is present in their lyrics? I mean, these are fairly dark:

“Like I wanna bite his head off, yeah, that’d be fun, cause I sure got an appetite“

Writer(s): Karen Poole, Michelle Poole, Terence Martin

If I’m being truthful though, Alisha’s Attic weren’t following where Alanis Morissette had walked but in the footsteps of a long line of female pop duos stretching back to the 80s with Mel & Kim and Pepsie and Shirley and on into the 90s with Shakespears Sister, Shampoo and perhaps the couple most like them Scarlet. That lineage would continue into the new millennium with t.A.t.u. and…erm…Daphne and Celeste? Or perhaps they modelled themselves after a trio. I’m thinking Wilson Phillips who consisted of Carnie and Wendy Wilson who were the daughters of The Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson and Chynna Phillips who was the offspring of John and Michelle Phillips of The Mamas & The Papas. So what you may ask? Well, sisters Shelly and Karen Poole were themselves from a pop background with their Dad being Brian Poole of *Brian Poole and the Tremeloes fame.

*Their bass player was Len ‘Chip’ Hawkes father of Chesney.

Anyway, I quite liked Alisha’s Attic and their quirky pop tunes of which eight were Top 40 hits. None got higher than No 12 (which was actually the peak position for three of their singles) and “I Am, I Feel” itself would spend three weeks at No 15 plus two at No 18 and for all the No 1 artist’s posturing about ‘girl power’, surely was a better feminist anthem than “Wannabe”.

And talking of feminist anthems, here’s Neneh Cherry with “Woman”. I say ‘feminist anthems’ but I’m not sure that’s the correct terminology anymore. It conjures up images of Viz character Millie Tant and the world is certainly more nuanced than that. Look, just to be clear, I believe in equality of the sexes and hate all the ‘lads, lads, lads’ culture (groups of men can be such pricks) so if I misuse a phrase then please accept my apologies in advance.

Right, with that disclaimer out of the way, let’s get back to Neneh Cherry. She was on The Graham Norton Show last week promoting her memoir A Thousand Threads which was published just a few days ago. It seems to be quite comprehensive and not just a retread of her discography – apparently she doesn’t get to that iconic TOTP appearance when she was seven months pregnant until three quarters of the way through the book. Sounds like an interesting read to be fair. In her interview with Graham we found out that the first record she ever bought was by Donny Osmond and that she’s now a grandmother – quite possibly the coolest grandmother ever but still a grandmother. Yeah, you feel old now don’t you. Me too.

From Neneh Cherry to the Manic Street Preachers via Bernard Butler. In the last post, I talked about how Suede recovered from the departure of their guitarist and song writer to return with their most commercial album ever. Butler, of course, is up there on stage with Neneh for this performance. And the Manics? Well, like Suede, they also lost a founding member from their line up around this time albeit in totally different circumstances with the disappearance of Richey Edwards. As with Suede, they bounced back with their biggest selling album ever in “Everything Must Go” the title track of which was released as the second single from it. I always preferred this to “A Design For Life” though I’m not quite sure why. Maybe it was that huge, orchestral swathe in the mix that they managed to produce that many in the music press compared to Phil Spector’s Wall of Sound. Apparently the song was written as an acknowledgment that since Edwards was no longer giving his input to the band, inevitably their identity and music had to change with the lyric “and I just hope that you can forgive us” a direct plea to the fans.

Despite the hopping around on one leg antics of James Dean Bradfield in this performance, I’m more drawn to the static drummer Sean Moore. It might be because he is stood up throughout as opposed to sat at a drum kit or it could very well be that his look here reminds me of the character of Garland Greene from 1997 film Con Air.

With this single, Eternal set a new record as the first all female group to score ten consecutive Top 20 hits in the UK. What a stinker of a song to do it with though. “Someday” was recorded for the Disney film The Hunchback Of Notre Dame though it only features as an instrumental with the full song having been discarded at the storyboarding stage. You can understand why. It’s a dreary, jaded, love-song- by-numbers snoozefest. In fact, I’d have been more entertained if Eternal had stood there on stage and spent three minutes making snoring noises. Apparently, “I Swear” hitmakers All-4-One recorded “Someday” as well and it’s their take that’s on the US version of the soundtrack. So why were Eternal asked to record it for the European soundtrack? I don’t get it. In an unusual disruption to their timeline, the group’s next single release was from their “Power Of A Woman” album but “Someday” would turn up on their 1997 studio album “Before The Rain” making a right mess of the chronology of their discography. Tsk.

The final three songs on the show have all been on before so I might whip through these at speed. We start with “Macarena” by Los Del Rio and can I get away with just signposting you to other versions of the song rather than thinking of something witty to say about it? I can? Marvellous!

OK, here’s the original 1993 version that sounds very different to the hit we all know and loathe that was The Bayside Boys remix:

Then there’s the Los Del Mar take on it which was out at the same time. Despite it being sung without any English lyrics, this lot were actually from Canada and it was their cover that was a big hit over there. That absence of English lyrics is pretty much the only difference to the Bayside Boys remix and yet amazingly, in Australia, they were both in the chart at the same time with Los Del Rio at No 1 and Los Del Mar at No 2. Just how do you explain that? Fortunately for the UK, the Los Del Mar version peaked at a lowly No 43.

There are loads of other versions including a country version by The GrooveGrass Boyz, a rap version by US rapper Tyga, an Italian version by Los Locos and even a take on it by Los Del Chipmunks (!). Finally, for those that really can’t stand the “Macarena”, there’s this…

Without wishing to discredit the aforementioned achievement of Eternal, I fear it was totally undermined, nay blown out of the water, by the chart feats of the Spice Girls. They are in the TOTP studio for the first time this week I think after two appearances from Japan and though the stage and space in which they have to work are much reduced, they give an energetic performance with Mel C even managing to get in her trademark backflip. “Wannabe” is into its second of seven weeks at No 1 and would be the second best selling single in 1996 in the UK after “Killing Me Softly” by the Fugees. That was literally just the start though. Of the eleven singles released during their career, nine would top the chart. They would sell 100 million records in total being both the best selling British act of the 90s and the best selling girl group of all time. Take that Eternal.

The play out video is “Freedom” by Robbie Williams. Now, if we’re talking chart records as we were Eternal and the Spice Girls, then we can’t ignore this man (whether you really want to or not). He has notched up seven No 1 singles and sold 77 million records worldwide. By 2008, he’d sold more albums in the UK than any other British solo artist in history. And yet somehow, it all started with this fairly straight cover of a George Michael song. Given that Robbie wouldn’t release anything else until “Old Before I Die” nine months later, I think “Freedom” could almost be a forgotten Williams single, like a false start. Indeed, it did not feature on either his 1999 compilation “The Ego Has Landed” that was initially released for the US and Australia markets nor his first official “Greatest Hits” album in 2004. However it was included on No the 2010 collection “In And Out Of Consciousness”.

Apparently, Williams was in a bad way when he filmed the video for “Freedom” struggling with an alcohol addiction and he certainly looks wild eyed in the promo – are his pupils dilated in some shots? He claims to have mimed to the original George Michael track as he hadn’t recorded his version before the video was filmed. Is that likely? Is that how it worked? Anyway, we’ll be seeing lots more of Mr Williams on TOTP in future repeats. As for Jas Mann, I’m not sure we will be seeing him again as he never presented the show after this (he was pretty shit to be fair) and he would only have one more UK hit when “The Boy With The X-Ray Eyes” made No 32. The odds on either him or Robbie becoming pop music superstars were probably evenly matched and low back then. Funny that.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Sean Maguire	Don’t Pull Your Love	Never
2	OMC	How Bizarre	No but my wife did
3	Alanis Morissette	Head Over Feet	No but I had the album
4	Alisha’s Attic	I Am, I Feel	Nope
5	Neneh Cherry	Woman	No but my wife had the album
6	Manic Street Preachers	Everything Must Go	See 3 above
7	Eternal	Someday	Negative
8	Los Del Rio	Macarena	As if
9	Spice Girls	Wannabe	No
10	Robbie Williams	Freedom	Nah

Disclaimer

I make no claim to the rights of this show and all ownership and contents including logos and graphics belongs totally to the BBC or copyright holder(s).

All opinions on the music and artists featured are my own. Sorry if you don’t agree.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0023k99/top-of-the-pops-02081996?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP Rewind – the 90s

My memories of 90s chart music

TOTP 08 JAN 1999

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TOTP 18 SEP 1998

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TOTP 14 MAR 1997

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TOTP 01 NOV 1996

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TOTP 02 AUG 1996

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